I work from home most days, and I will get the ‘occasional’ door to door salesperson. This includes pastors pitching their church, trying to get attendance up, Jehovah witnesses traveling in pairs, Mormons traveling in packs, girl scouts selling cookies, lawn care professionals, pest control folks, magazine subscription kids, kids sports team fundraisers, and probably about 20 other different breeds.

Now, I can’t resist helping out the kids. I will always buy girl scout cookies… and my mid-section is proof. Any kid that comes to my door selling something… anything… will probably walk away with cash. I think it’s mainly because I really feel for the parents who are standing behind them, walking through neighborhoods… knowing that come a few months from now, they will also be loading up the care-a-van / grocery getter with boxes and boxes of the crap that their kid was so successful selling several months before. I just know that some day I might be the same poor sucker holding my daughter’s hand as the door to door body guard.

I also usually go easy on the church folks. I am normally very polite when they come… saying ‘I am already saved, and I’m in a church’… which is usually enough to send them on the way in trade for a tract, pamphlet, or whatever. (in case I ever decide to take my money elsewhere). Occasionally, and usually the pastors… will actually attempt to confirm these facts… challenging me on bible knowledge and asking me where I go to church. These folks make living worthwhile. ‘Church of the horizontal blessing’ is my favorite answer. I really feel for these guys though… as the church is definitely changing. Myself… I’m actually involved with a small home church of about 30 to 50 people that meet in each other’s homes. We rarely attend a regular Sunday service, and our tithe goes to this little home church rather than to a larger corporate effort. The majority of the people we know either worship in similar fashion, or are a part of a much larger super-church. This is the direction that the church as been going, and so smaller brick and mortar churches suffer as a result. They are definitely the E’s and S’s in the ESBI Quadrant.

All bets are off with the rest of these poor clowns.

Yesterday I had a pest control guy come knocking at about 2pm. Keep in mind that we have a dog and a cat, both of which I need to wrestle with every time the doorbell rings and I have to open the door. The dog will howl and bark… and both of them will attempt to run outside. Each time the cat gets out, it’s a 10 minute endeavor to get him back into the house, so I need to hold both animals while I open the door. Also to note… It is challenging enough to stay focused as a telecommuter, without people coming to your door and interrupting you.

So this pest control guy starts coo-ing at my dog… ‘awww… you have a little puppy…’. Güenther is no longer a ‘little’ puppy, which is why I was struggling to keep him from mauling the guy. He (the sales guy at my door) was probably trying to make conversation… trying to connect with his victim, me… and he figured that this tasmanian devil at the end of my arm would be a good way to do that. Once I saw the badge on his jacket that said ‘Pest Control’, I informed him that we already had a pest control provider… ‘but thanks for stopping by.’  Now… this guy was probably in his late teens, early twenties…. and he gave me the kind of look that seemed to scream teenage angst… ‘You don’t understand me DAD!’ … he then informed me (in a very matter of fact way) that we have spiders, and motioned up to the corner of the entrance of my house. I thanked him, and said … ‘I’ll let our current pest guys know, thanks’. He still continued to try and sell me… but his attitude was really aggravating me, not to mention that he just didn’t seem to notice me wrestling with my animals… so I finally just said, ‘we’ve already got someone doing this, and i’m really busy. I have to go. Thank you for stopping by.’

Now, I’d imagine that most of the time when these door to door guys come during the day… they don’t get a guy like me on the other side of the door. They probably get some middle aged mother of 3, who also has her hands full. I don’t know how effective door to door sales really is for these guys… but there has to be a better approach to the problem than interrupting someone in the middle of the day.

I will say that when we lived in the low income apartments on the other side of town, even the girl scouts wouldn’t knock on our door.